Storyteller On My Skin
by Eternal Love Song
Summary: Your soulmate couldn't lie to you, but they could lie to everyone else and those lies would show up on your skin. Once Darcy learned that, she started reading everything that appeared on her skin. On everyone's skin. Lies didn't last forever. They stayed on your skin for maybe a day or two, then they were gone.


Darcy learned to lie from a very young age.

When she was younger, she didn't understand the strange stories that were scrawled along her skin. She didn't understand her mother's insistence on covering her skin or why she told so many tales about it.

"My Darcy, she just gets so cold."

"She has a little rash, I want to keep it covered."

"She's sick. I want her to sweat out her fever."

She didn't understand why her mother would say such things. Not until she learned about soulmates. Not until she learned the stories on her skin were lies from her soulmate. Not until she learned that most people didn't have paragraphs of lies on their skin. Not until she learned that her mother was embarrassed for her.

Your soulmate couldn't lie to you, but they could lie to everyone else and those lies would show up on your skin. Once Darcy learned that, she started reading everything that appeared on her skin. On everyone's skin. Lies didn't last forever. They stayed on your skin for maybe a day or two, then they were gone. There was a lot that could be learned from that though. How often someone lied and what kind of lies they told.

As she grew older, Darcy thought it was telling that her father was never around and the one lie that appeared most often on her mother's skin was "I love you."

Darcy refused to be ashamed of her soulmate before she'd even met them. Especially not for something like lying. Her mother had lied most of Darcy's life and she still loved her. She would not continue her mother's strategy of covering herself up though. Instead, she wrote her own lies. Funny stories that she made up or lies she copied from other people. Sometimes there were no lies on her skin or very few and she didn't feel right unless she filled up the empty space.

She learned that her soulmate was not Luke, Luna, Loptr, Bragi, Theoric, Ikol, or a whole host of other names that they apparently introduced themselves with. Her soulmate had a penchant for pretending to be people they were not. Her soulmate frequently lied about being sent to places or set on task that they were not by other people.

Her soulmate told stories a lot. Maybe more than they told small lies. Darcy started to tell stories too. She told stories about why her homework wasn't done, how things got broken in the house, why she was at home by herself so often. She didn't really care about getting caught. It was fun to see what people would do in response to her when she said things that were more and more ridiculous. Lying was fun. She couldn't understand why her mother never seemed to be having any.

Sometimes Darcy would put herself to sleep on her soulmates tales. Silly stories about someone named Fandral making a fool of himself or a man called Volstagg going on an epic quest for food. Harsh stories about murder or betrayal that left her scared in her bed or fun adventures to steal things that don't belong to them. Darcy would try to write them down sometimes and read them later, they were so funny and it got awkward trying to read thing wrapped around her arm or leg, downright impossible to read the things that ended up scrawled across her back. Some days she was covered with lies head to toe and sometimes it was only one or two things on the palm of her hand. There didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to where things ended up, as if the words fell out of the sky and landed on whatever part of her they touched. Maybe there was a neat paragraph on her stomach Monday, but a tale that twisted around her waist on Wednesday.

She took up photography once she was old enough, taking pictures that sometimes straddled the line of being provocative just so that she'd be able to see all the words that twisted around her body. It fun and interesting. She started saving them so that she could eventually give them to her soulmate. She didn't know why, but part of her liked the idea of presenting these photos of herself marked with her soulmates words. It felt like a claim. It felt like bragging.

Darcy switched majors twice, trying to chase down what her soulmate spent his life doing. There were a lot of references to mythology, but those happened in the form of stories. There was talk of kings and politics, which lead her to political science and honestly explained a lot about her soulmate. Politicians and royalty (and Darcy nearly couldn't fathom the possibility that her soulmate was royalty) would explain why her soulmate lied like they breathed. She wondered if she had learned any secrets among the lies her soulmate told, but there was already so much to sift through that she was never really sure.

When Jane hit an attractive blond with her car, Darcy didn't really think anything of it. Not at first. Something nagged at her though and eventually, she realized why. "Thor" was a name that she read before. A name that she was really familiar with actually.

"Wait, your name is Thor?" Darcy questioned with wide eyes.

"As I just said," he responded.

It would be a long shot, that this crazy person (was he crazy?) might know her soulmate. Darcy couldn't really stop herself from asking.

"Um, this might sound kinda weird, but do you recognize any of these names?" Darcy listed off the names she remembered from her soulmates stories and Thor nodded at more than a few of them.

"Aye. How do you know of them?" he questioned.

"My soulmate told me," she said. "Kinda. He tells a lot of stories." As proof, she held out her arm which held the more recent lies from her soulmate. Thor frowned as he read the words twisting along her skin.

"Do you... what else have you seen?"

Something like hope ignited within her. This man could possibly lead her to her soulmate! But what would that mean? She put her questions aside as she presented a notebook that she'd used to record her soulmate's stories. Thor only had to turn a few pages before he closed the book and handed it back to her.

"Your soulmate, you said?" he asked her.

Darcy nodded. "So, you know them?" she asked impatiently.

"I believe that I do."

She waited, but Thor didn't say anything else. "Well, don't leave me in suspense!"

Thor looked as if he were contemplating something before he answered. "I could be wrong..." she silently urged him to continue. "My brother, Loki. I believe that he is your soulmate." Thor's voice dropped and he looked away. "I was under the impression that he did not have a soulmate."

Darcy... didn't know how to feel about that. "I guess I'll have to wait and see."

Darcy didn't have to wait nearly as long as she though she would have to. Four strange people showed up barely a day later, all with familiar names. Even knowing that all the stories she'd heard about them were lies, Darcy still felt as if she knew these people.

"You're just as charming as he told me you'd be," Darcy flirted, lied, to Fandral once he'd wandered a bit off from the others.

Fandral laughed. "Oh? Thor has been spinning a yarn about me, has he?"

"Actually," Darcy began, hoping that this gambit wouldn't go horribly wrong. "It was Loki that told me."

"Loki?" Fandral's eyes were wide with surprise, but not disbelief. "I can't imagine his words were too flattering."

"That's a matter of perspective," she told him. Fandral smiled, charmed, and Darcy smiled too. She repeated this process to the others with varying results. Her hope was that Loki would eventually see the lies she was telling and come to see why.

The weight was much longer this time, but she didn't find herself disappointed. Loki was tall, very tall, and Darcy wanted to climb him like a tree when she saw him. He was immaculately dressed in a suit and a scowl. He looked nothing like Thor and that made her hesitate before deciding that this was Loki. But the only other knew people to show up had been connected to Thor, too, so it wasn't too much of a stretch.

"Loki?"

His eyes traveled up and down her quickly. "And you are?"

"Fairly certain I'm your soulmate," Darcy answered with a grin. "But I guess that's only if you saw me telling lies to Thor's friends."

Loki's eyes widened and he appraised her again, this time taking in the words wrapped around her. "Name yourself," he demanded.

Darcy could have been offended by that, she wasn't. This was a lot to take in, she would excuse him if he was a little short with her. "Darcy," she answered. "But you might recognize a few other names? I started borrowing them from you after a while because I thought it was fun."

Loki's lips began to lift up into a smile. "Did you, now?"

"Yeah, I did." Dracy stepped closer to him when it seemed he wasn't going to and Loki chose to meet her halfway.

"Little Liar," he breathed out fondly, leaning down to press his forehead to hers. "I've looked forward to this day."

"Right back at you."

Whatever he'd one for seemed all but forgotten. He wrapped her up in his arms, lifted her to level where she wrapped her legs around his waist, and whispered, "May I kiss you?"

Just to be sure, Darcy decided to lie. She started to say 'No" but what came out instead was, "I was hoping you'd ask that." She felt delight curl inside her with the realization that she couldn't lie and when she moved forward to claim her soulmates lips, she could feel the tension in his body drain away completely.


End file.
